Secondhand Sinners

by Genevieve Lynne

  “He who?”

  “That policeman who came to the house to tell me about Norman.”

  Miller knew she was talking about Alan. There was no doubt in his mind. Alan wanted Emily to come to town. Why though? Could he even trust Gail knew what she was saying? He stood up and put his chair back against the wall. He was hoping to get some answers. It was clear Gail didn’t have any. He was about to walk out of the room when Gail caught his hand.

  “I need bleach,” she said.

  “Why do you need bleach?”

  “The cleaning.”

  He looked at her sunken cheeks and the dark circles under her eyes. She wasn’t well. He couldn’t leave her there, not after he’d already seen how bad off she was. “Let me take you home, Gail.”

  “I can’t leave. Norman’s getting better. I have to take care of him.”

  “Norman had a stroke. He would want you to take care of yourself and get some rest.”

  “Not yet. I have to clean.”

  “The custodians will clean.”

  “No. She’s mine, I have to clean her.”

  “You clean her with bleach?” Miller had never heard of anyone washing another person with bleach. Something like that must be pretty painful. “Why would you wash her with bleach? Isn’t that bad for the skin?”

  “Not her outsides. Her insides.”

  “You mean you used bleach inside her?” Bile stung the back of his throat. “Why?”

  “Because Mother said she was defiled.”

  “Who defiled her?”

  Gail closed her eyes tight, covered her ears with her hands and screamed, “No! No! No!”

  A nurse in scrubs ran into the room and looked back and forth between Miller and Gail, settling her gaze on him. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” Miller backed away from Gail a few steps. “I was leaving, and she needs to be checked out by a doctor.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Gail Collins.”

  The nurse moved closer to Gail and took her wrist to check her pulse. “Mrs. Collins, do you have a doctor I can call for you?”

  “Dr. Nichols. He’s checking on me.”

  “Oh.” The nurse dropped Gail’s wrist.

  “Who’s Dr. Nichols?” Miller asked.

  “He’s a neurologist who treats the dementia patients. Be right back.”

  While she was gone, Miller helped Gail into a chair and sat with her, ignoring her requests for bleach. Each request for the poison drove home the fact that the question he’d been asking himself for the last fourteen years—Why did Emily run away?— had just been answered.

  Bleach. It’s what Emily didn’t talk about and what made Levi beat his dad to a pulp. Emily ran to protect her baby, the baby she believed was Miller’s. He remembered trying to talk her into telling her parents that she was pregnant. She was so adamant that her family could never find out. Emily wasn’t the one who broke his heart. Gail and Norman and Violet were. No wonder she ran away. No wonder she stayed away.

  He sat up with a start. She stayed away…until now…until Alan lured her back. That’s what Gail had said. “He took my phone and dialed her number. He handed it to me because he said she should be here.”

  Why would Alan want her back? How could he have let her go with him without argument? It didn’t do him a bit of good to go off on his own because he still didn’t have any answers. Only more questions. He didn’t know what to do. His visit with Gail was a dead end, and three o’clock was closing in.

  The nurse hurried back into the room. “Okay. I left a message for Dr. Nichols' assistant. Hopefully she’ll call us back soon.” She leaned over and got face-to-face with Gail. “Okay, Ms. Collins?”

  “Huh?”

  “As soon as Nurse Jennifer calls me back, I’ll know where we need to take you.”

  “She’s got to be exhausted. I can take her home so she can get some rest,” Miller offered. Then something in his cluttered mind clicked. “Wait a minute. Nurse Jennifer?”

  “Jennifer Abernathy. She’s been Nichols' assistant for the last several months.”

  “Sonofabitch.”

  Jennifer Abernathy was the woman Alan was screwing. One mention of her at the police station had changed Alan’s mind completely about letting Emily see Levi, like he didn’t want her name to be repeated. Alan was up to something, may have been up to something for a lot longer than Miller was even able to consider at that moment.

  “Where is Dr. Nichols' office?” he asked.

  “He shares a space with some other specialists here in the hospital. On the second floor. Why?”

  “I have some questions for the good nurse.” He took off for the stairs, not wanting to waste time waiting for the elevator. The hospital only had two floors, and the one elevator was slower than if it was servicing a skyscraper. He found Dr. Nichols' office, told the receptionist he needed to talk to Jennifer Abernathy, and waited while she went to get her.

  With time to think, it dawned on him that his problem was bigger than Emily going off with Alan after hearing his conversations with Levi. Alan knew about Abby. Shit. Anyone who watched that video knew about Abby. There was no way this information was going to stay contained. He was going to have to tell her. Soon. Today. He couldn’t have her finding out the same way Emily did. Less than a week ago, he had himself convinced he didn’t care about Emily. He hoped he’d never see her again. He hoped she lived with the kind of unrest that woke her from her sleep in the middle of the night and kept her awake with regret for how she left him. That was all before he got a glimpse of who Emily really was. She wasn’t the cold bitch who left him alone with no word of why. She was the damaged girl who ran to save her baby.

  “She quit,” the receptionist came back and announced.

  “She quit?”

  “Yeah. Nichols ain’t happy about it either. He just got her trained.”

  “When did she quit?”

  “She and Nichols had gotten back from visiting a patient in the hospital, so I guess it was sometime after that.”

  “Did she say why she quit?”

  “Something about coming into some money soon.”

  “Money? Have you seen her with Alan Dupree? He’s a Bokchito policeman.”

  The receptionist thought for a few moments and shrugged. “I think so. Nichols only has office hours here once or twice a week.”

  “This patient they went to see, was it Gail Collins?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Do you know where Jenny lives?”

  “I can’t tell you that either.”

  “Can I talk to the doctor?”

  “Are you a family member of one of his patients?”

  “No. This is very important, though.”

  “So are privacy laws.”

  “Fine.” Miller resisted the urge to storm out of the room, opting for a more gracious exit. “Thanks for your time.” He stopped at the water fountain for a drink and had stepped into the stairwell when the receptionist hurried inside with him.

  “I couldn’t say anything in the office, but yeah, Gail Collins is a patient. She hasn’t gotten any better since she started seeing Dr. Nichols. In fact, her file says that her condition is deteriorating rapidly. She’s not taking her medicine.”

  Miller stared at the receptionist, unsure how to respond. He knew he should’ve been more concerned about Gail, though right now all he could think about was getting to the bottom of what Alan’s plan was. Because there had to be some kind of plan in play here. There were too many coincidences. Alan was hooking up with Jenny Abernathy, who was working for the same doctor who was treating Gail. Jenny quit suddenly, on the same day Alan picked Emily up and showed her that video, because she was going to come into some money. There were still so many unanswered questions. He’d obviously taken advantage of the situation with Levi to lure Emily here, which meant he probably planned to show her the video as soon as he saw it. So how could he have known her father would have a stroke
and give him a good reason to come for her?

  “Please don’t tell anyone I told you all that,” the receptionist said.

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “My horoscope.”

  “Your horoscope?”

  “I’m Capricorn. It said I should aid a person in need today. Do you need anything else?”

  “Do you know how I can get in touch with Ms. Abernathy?”

  “No. You could try Facebook.”

  “Facebook?”

  “You know, write on her wall or send her a message.”

  Miller was not about to write on the Facebook page of someone who was only six or seven years older than Abby. He’d look like a creepy old man…like Alan. If she was smart, she would block him the moment she got the message. “Or you could sneak a peek at her personnel file.”

  “I’ll try.” She grimaced. “If I get caught I’d be in big trouble.”

  “I really need it.” He gave the girl his phone number and asked him to call if she got any info.

  Walking back to the waiting room where Gail was, he couldn’t get over the feeling that the situation was much worse that it appeared on the surface. He could always hope to run into some more Capricorns; one of them might know where Jenny Abernathy lived. He was almost back to the ICU waiting room when the nurse who was looking after Gail nearly ran him over.

  “Did she follow you out?” she asked.

  “Gail?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, I didn’t see her.”

  The woman pressed her fisted hand to her forehead. “Oh no.”

  “What happened?”

  “She’s missing. She kept trying to make coffee. The reservoir in the pot was empty, so I went to the sink for water. When I got back to the waiting room she was gone. I’ve checked the men’s and women’s bathrooms. I called the nursery—people like to go look at the babies—they haven’t seen her.”

  “Did you look in her husband’s room?”

  “Who’s her husband?”

  “I’ll show you.” Miller gestured for her to follow him through the sliding doors. “I’m sure she wandered into his room.”

  She wasn’t in Norman’s room. Any other day Miller wouldn’t care where she was. Today was different and not only because he had witnessed the advanced state of her deterioration twice now. He had a terrible feeling they were being played somehow.

  The young lady threw her hands up and let them drop to her sides. “I’m going to go check the bathroom again.”

  Miller stepped further into the room, closing the distance between Norman and himself. He wasn’t sure what to think of the man in the bed. If it was anyone else, he’d feel sorry for him, even say a little prayer. He felt no urge to pray for this man. However, he did notice something on the rolling tray beside the bed. Between a box of tissues and a tube of Vaseline was a syringe. Surely that wasn’t supposed to be there. No doctor or nurse would ever leave a syringe lying around like that.

  “She wasn’t in there,” the nurse said, coming back in.

  “What’s that doing there?”

  “What?”

  Miller pointed to the tray. “That.”

  “I don’t…Oh. How did that…” She pulled a glove out of the box on the wall, put it on, and picked up the syringe. She studied it. “Looks like one of ours, and it’s been used. There’s something still in there.” She lifted it to her nose and sniffed it. “Oh God.” She grimaced as she pulled it away from her face.

  “What?” Miller asked.

  “It’s bleach.”

  The knot that had been in Miller’s stomach all morning jumped into his throat. He swallowed hard. “Did you say bleach?”

  “Yeah. Why would anyone fill a syringe with bleach? What’d they do with it? And why leave it in here?”

  “She kept talking about bleach. She asked where it was. I told her it was probably in the cleaning closet. Where is the cleaning closet?”

  “A few doors down. Where would she…” She patted the front pockets of her top and then cringed. “They’re gone. I had four syringes in my pocket. I was taking them back to the supply closet when Ms. Collins started screaming. Why did she want syringes?”

  “She wanted syringes and bleach so she could clean his blood.”

  Her eyes widened and she gasped. “No.”

  “I don’t know for sure, but shouldn’t you give him something?”

  “There’s nothing to give,” she said, reaching for the call button. “If she injected bleach into his IV, he’ll die. All his organs will be damaged. His heart will fail.”

  “You can’t do anything?”

  “No. She’s killed him.” She pressed the call button again. “Why would she do that?”

  Miller’s first instinct was to find Emily so he could tell her about her father. Rocky relationship or not, she needed to know her father was about to die. She needed a chance to make peace with him and say goodbye.

  “How long does he have?”

  “I don’t know.” She pushed the call button again, pounded it, actually. “Why isn’t anyone out there answering?”

  “What’s that on his forehead?”

  The nurse wiped at the orange smudge with her gloved thumb and then studied it. “Looks like lipstick.” She sniffed it. “Old lipstick.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  Emily

  Alan was about to break the door down with all the pounding, so Emily pushed the basket full of make-up back into the cabinet and closed the door. She was shoving the bottle of perfume into her pocket when he kicked the door in.

  “What the hell are you doing in there?” he asked, looking at her hand in her pocket.

  She pulled her hand out quickly and moved to turn the water off, like she was finishing washing her hands. “Nothing.”

  “What is that?”

  “What?”

  “In your pocket.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the hallway. He pushed her up against the wall and flipped her around to face it, holding her there with his hand on her hip while his other hand slid under her shirt, around her waist and into her pocket to pull the perfume bottle out. “What the hell is this?”

  “I’ve always admired Elizabeth Taylor,” she answered.

  “Like hell you have.” He tossed the bottle back into the bathroom so hard it hit the opposite wall, fell into the bathtub, and broke. “I’m a policeman, Em. I teach self-defense every other week at the VFW, and I know what you’re thinking. My advice to you is to stop thinking it. You don’t want me to tell your little boy the Easter Bunny is dead, do you?”

  “He doesn’t believe in the Easter Bunny.”

  He put his mouth to her ear. “Then I’ll tell him the fucking Tooth Fairy committed suicide. Then I’ll call the school and talk to Abby.”

  There were so many things she wanted to say, most of which included a threat to his manhood. He had proved his point, though. She was at his mercy. “Fine. You win. Let’s go look for your damn treasure.”

  When they got back to her room, Alan leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “Start at the beginning of that night, when you first saw him.”

  “He came in through the window and we talked a little. Then I went to get Levi. I was only gone for a second. We all sat around and talked. Then he left.”

  “You were with him the whole time? You didn’t step out to give them time to do…whatever?”

  “I always stayed in my room. Sometimes I’d put on my earphones and do my homework so they could talk in private, but they never did ‘whatever.’ If my parents thought for a second that Levi was in my room while I was out of it, they would have gotten suspicious.”

  “How did Daniel seem to you? Was he acting weird?”

  “No more than he usually did when he’d gone over a week without his medicine. That’s why I asked him to come over that night. I had stolen some of Ma'am's jewelry t
o give him to pawn for his medicine. So he came over. I gave him a ring. We all hung out for a while, and then he left.”

  “Then you didn’t see him again until the hospital?”

  “Yeah.” The whole exercise was really starting to hurt. It had taken Emily forever to push down those flashes of Daniel's bloody face that once came at her every five minutes. This was bringing them all back.

  “Did he say anything to you at the hospital?”

  “He said, ‘I’m sorry.’”

  Alan leaned against the wall and eyed her. “What was he sorry about?”

  She shrugged. “He died before he could tell me.”

  “That’s all he said?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And he didn’t give you anything?”

  “Nothing. I swear. Do you honestly think Hoyt was stashing money in a safe-deposit box the whole time Daniel was going weeks at a time without his medicine?”

  “Yeah. I know you’re only worried about what Daniel endured, but I was only eating one meal a day—the free lunch I got at school—while Hoyt was hoarding cash. Then when I got out of school and got a job, Hoyt stole most of my paycheck. Hell, I had to join the Air Force to get away from the bastard.”

  “Are you’re sure it was money?”

  “He called it his ‘treasure’. What else would it be? May not have been money. It’s something of value, coins or something like that. I need it.”

  Emily knew Daniel had it bad being Hoyt’s son. She never thought about how badly Alan had it too. It was only natural that he thought he was entitled to anything Hoyt had. Hoyt did owe him something. Hoyt. Not her, and definitely not Miller.

  “What makes you think Daniel put it in here?”

  “I’ve looked all over this shit hole of a town. He had to have given it to you. It has to be in this house.”

  “What if he never had it?”

  “Oh he had it, all right.”

  “I’m done,” Jack announced. “What else can I do?”

  “Go look in my closet. Maybe there’s something in there for you to play with.”

  Jack got out of the chair and stomped to the closet. “Oh cool!” he said after only being in there for a few seconds. “I found something!”